


Blemished

by NervousAsexual



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 16:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: An inventory of some of Harding's favorite freckles, scars, and scars that look like freckles.(a treat for greypezzola)





	Blemished

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreyPezzola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyPezzola/gifts).



This one looks like a boat. It's big for a freckle, and in a weird place on her elbow where she can't see it easily. But if she can get it to reflect in something, like a particularly still stream, or a clean window, or the glassy eyes of a man she just killed (it happens, sometimes), she can see the tiny little sail poking up out of the plain flat bed of the boat. Is that what the part of a boat that floats is called? Who knows.

These ones here, on the back of her knee, she used to connect with mud when she was a small girl. There aren't that many of them, but if she took a twig and twirled it around in thin mud she could draw lines between them and make a hound or a bell or a lady in a skirt. There are a few more freckles than there used to be, so she could theoretically make even more pictures than before, but she hasn't tried in years. Mother used to hate it when she did that, anyway. She'd look at her and look at the mud and say, "Lace, when are you going to grow up?"

That was ages ago. She hasn't yet!

The one on her chin looks like it's a freckle, but it isn't. It's a scar. She got it when she was... seven? eight? She was running down a hill after the neighbor's sheep and underestimated how steep it would be. She went down it faster and faster until suddenly her strides were too long for her legs and suddenly she missed the ground and went sailing along and then skidded to a stop on her face. Came home with a beard of blood and dirt, and all it left behind was the little spot that looked just like every other freckle on her.

What else? A scar on the bottom of her foot that nobody else has ever seen. If anybody ever saw and asked, she'd tell them that she got it fighting a bear. A big bear. A big bear that was possibly on fire. She would definitely not tell the real story.

(And the real story is this: when she was young but not too young, only a few years before the sky tore open, she was out having a wander. She went south, and south, and south again until she reached Lake Luthias. The weather was warm but not terribly warm, still not past the danger of frost, but the sun was bright in the sky and it shimmered on the surface of the light like magic. She'd taken off her shoes and socks and sat for hours on one of the docks that stretched out over the water. Where were the humans that she knew owned the dock? At the time she thought they must have been planting the crops, but as she got older she wondered, because with the risk of frost still in the air they shouldn't have... but wherever they were, they didn't say a thing to her and she sat there with her toes in the cold water and breathed in that snappy watery smell until she realized she had gone absolutely pink from the sun. She should have realized that would happen. After all, what else would her freckled skin do except burn? She jumped right up and went to run back to shore, splashing in the shallows, as if that would help... and she knew the split second before she stepped down onto the broken glass that was a mistake. She tried to pull up, keep herself from putting her weight down, but too late. She stumbled from the water, shedding blood every which way, face-planted into the scrubby grass that grew near the shore. Immediately she knew what Mother would say. Well, if you just stayed home... if you just kept your shoes on like a proper lady... So instead she bandaged up her foot herself and stuffed it back into her shoe, and limped home to tell no one.)

This one is her own fault, too, the one, or mess of ones, on her forearm. There is a reason for the leather armbands worn by scouts and rookery attendants alike. Ravens will absolutely shred your arm. Not their fault; they need those talons, and she knows perfectly well the risks. The only trouble is, sometimes word comes suddenly. Sometimes you'll be sleeping, or bathing, or something else that requires removing that bulky padded thing (makes you sweat like the dickens, too!), and bam, there's a raven. What else can you do except hold out your bare arm and let it perch there? Those ravens travel a long way. They deserve a place to land.

There is this one, though, and it's not her fault. The one on her head, just above the hairline. Of course! How could she brag and impress cute people if it were a visible scar? What? She could do that very well? Inconceiveable! That one actually has an exciting story to it. Right after the sky opened up and demons poured out, a rift opened up right outside of Redcliffe Village. There was a villager nearby--if it were a visible scar she'd tell people it was a small child or a frail elder, but in fact it was a really, really drunk farmhand--and the wraiths that came pouring out went straight for him. She wasn't even supposed to be in town that day, but Mother had been making roast fennec and run fresh out of brown sugar. (Who even knew there was brown sugar in roast fennec? she'd asked. You would, if you ever helped out in this Maker-forsaken kitchen, Mother had answered). So there she was when horrible glowing monsters appeared, bearing down on one very confused drunk person, who seemed incapable of defending himself in anyway beyond singing "Ballad of Nuggins" in a tuneless and off-beat way. She had to do something, obviously, and it was easy enough to notch an arrow and dispatch the first wraith, but that drew the attention of others, and one thing led to another and...

Well, that's where that particular scar came from, anyway. And there are others, lots of others, more than anybody who is still up and kicking had a right to have. But every single one has some some kind of story to tell. Good or bad, every one is special. Which sounds like something the Chantry tells little ones to explain why some people live in mansions and other people live in shacks down by the river. Though of course the Chantry would also tell her not to be proud, especially of the freckles. She didn't even do anything to earn the freckles! Unless you count getting horribly sunburnt, but that, she is pretty sure, is not how freckles work.

And on that note, there is one particular freckle... one she has a special fondness for...

It's shaped like a mabari, for real this time, no line-connecting required. A special mabari, actually. A very specific mabari. Andraste's mabari. The Chantry swears there's no such thing, but everybody who's ever met a mabari knows better. This is a tiny little mabari, its little stump tail hardly even noticeable, but she knows perfectly well what it is.

Where is this mabari freckle?

Well, buy her a drink first, and after that we'll see.


End file.
